Google is really one step forward to everyone. I still remember the time Google launched their mail service called “Gmail” and the account creation was only via ‘invitation’. It took about 1+ month to get my sign up form. But, i wont regret for the time i waited to get the service, because Gmail is all packed with the so called ‘essence’ of Google. Of course the space limitation (i.e., 7.5GB for each person) is really a headache but the Gmail is offering the best, that no other mail provider is giving. There are lot of features, that Gmail is providing and i found that most of the people(Including me if this is few months back) don’t know about this things, then i decided to have a blog post about this. So here are the 14 Tips and Tricks that i thought i must share with you. Just have a look;
1. Send and Receive mail from multiple addresses
A lot of you still use several email accounts and its cumbersome to go each website and check for new mail. Gmail saves you the ordeal of monitoring each account individually. You can use Gmail as the hub for all of them. Go to Settings->Accounts and imports. Click on the “Add POP3 email account”. You can even send mail from other accounts using your Gmail account. Click on “Send mail as” and set-up custom-from addresses for each account you want to send mail from. In fact with Google Apps, even companies prefer Gmail for their professional email requirements.
2. Keyboard Shortcuts
Yes, Gmail supports an array of keyboard shortcuts for those requirement operations you perform using the mouse. Use keyboard shortcuts to save time. You can enable keyboard shortcuts from the settings and then use [J] and [K] to navigate up and down within your inbox. Press [O] to open messages. Similarly, to reply an email or thread, press [R]. To compose a new email message, simply [C] rather than clicking on compose. Starring important threads and conversations is as easy as pressing [S]. In order to remove a star, press [S] again. Finally press [E] to archive the message or conversation. For complete list of keyboard shortcuts press [?].
3. Read messages sent exclusively for you
It’s easy to be lost in your inbox, especially if you frequently receive email, or are part of several long discussions. However, you can sort email sent exclusively for you, with Gmail’s search function. Go to settings. Under the General Tab, select ‘Show indicators’ under the “Personal level indicators” option. Now, next time someone sends you an email exclusively addressed to you, you will find two arrows next to the subject in your inbox. A single arrow(>) means the email is sent to both you and others and a double arrow(>>) means that the email sent just to you. This way, you can easily prioritise the email you need to attend.
4. Sign out remote sessions
If you accessed your Gmail account from a cyber cafe or your friend’s computer, and forgot to sign off from there, Gmail lets you sign out remotely. The button of your inbox shows information about the time and location of the last activity on your account. Click on “Details” there to see whether your account is still open on another computer and click on the “Sign out all other sessions” to close other open sessions.
5. Superstars
Go to settings->Labs and enable superstars. You’ll now have 11 additional options to star your messages. This even helps in better search, as you can use the ‘has’ operator to search for the emails with different types of stars, such as has:blue-star or has:red-bang. To get the names of these stars, hover your mouse over their icon.
6. Multiple attachments
When you want to send more than one file as an attachment from the same folder, you don’t have to add them individually add them. In the select file dialogue box, press [ctrl] and click on the files that you want to attach to your message and press Ok. Now, the progress bars of each file will appear together as they upload.
7. Search Operators
Gmail search become so powerful with the search operators, or words that help modify your queries. For example, when you want a specific email sent by Gary Containing a DOC file, type ‘from:Gary has:attachment’. Similarly, if you want to find all unread messages in your Inbox sent directly to you, simply type ‘to:me is:unread in:inbox’.
8. Filter your email
Gmail does not just give you a name@gmail.com address to you when you sign up. There are several other address variations, all of which get delivered to you. Just append an [+] symbol and any combination of words or numbers after your name such as changing ‘garyqm@gmail.com’ to ‘garyqm+forum@gmail.com’ or ‘garyqm+temp@gmail.com’ . You can now add a filter to label and/or archive messages sent with the variations so that they don’t clutter your inbox. You can conveniently go to the specific label to retrieve the email you sent.
9. Reduce annoying prompts
Quite often we realise we don’t need to compose an email send short notes to our friends. In fact just the subject line is sufficient to convey the entire message. However, the underlying code within Gmail still prompts you to add body text and gives annoying java scripts prompts. This is meant to prevent you from inadvertently sending a blank email. To do away with the error, just add (EOM) or EOM at the end of the subject line(short for End Of Message), and Gmail will send the message without the extra prompt.
10. Inbox Preview
Gmail automatically detects commonly emailed links such as YouTube videos, Picassa Photo albums and Flickr links, and gives you a preview from within your Gmail Inbox. In order to enable this feature, Go to Settings->Labs and enable Inbox preview.
11. Control incoming mail
Go to settings->Filters and setup filters to automatically label, archive, delete, or forward mail with specified criteria. You can do so based on any message. You can select ‘Filter messages like this’ from the “more actions” drop-down menu.
12. Undo sent mail
Go to settings and chose the time delay before an email is actually sent, so that you can cancel sending and edit your message again. This is quite handy,especially when you realise you sent the email to the wrong recipient.
13. Select multiple messages
To select multiple messages in your Gmail inbox, just select the first message in the series, hold [shift] key and then select the last message. After this you can apply any action, like archiving or adding a label, to this whole set of messages.
14. Emphasize words in chat
Unlike other chat clients such as Yahoo messenger, Gmail doesn’t support text formatting options. However, it does let you add some basic formatting as you type, enabling you to emphasise words from the remainder text. In case you want to make a certain portion of your conversation bold, enclose it within asterisks. For example, type *text*. You can also italicise text. To do this, use underscores instead of asterisks as follows: _text_. Similarly, you can strikethrough your text by enclosing the text within hyphens. For example, type –text-.
So that’s all about few tips and tricks in Gmail that really helping me out. There are lot to share but these are the basic ones. I hope you all will implement this and share your experience. Do you feel like i missed any points? then, feel free to share it here. If you liked this post please “Like” us on Facebook. Thank you for reading.
nice list sreerag…i like to add one more..u can even add snippets for url shortening and google search which are very help ful for bloggers..
Hey thanks for the suggestion… will try that…